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Thursday, 25 February 2016

Futurist Violence and Fancy Suits

By David Wong

There are so many internet connected devices available.I have the usual devices: smartphone, gaming
consoles, a connected TV, a tablet, a regular computer.I haven’t got a smartwatch yet and virtual
reality googles are still a bit too expensive, but I expect I will get them
eventually.All this technology is going
to mean that I’ll be connected to everyone else all the time. The consequences of this may be…
interesting.This is where David Wong’s
action comedy novel Futuristic Violence
and Fancy Suits comes in.

Set in a near future where global citizens’ public and
private actions are publicly broadcast over the internet daily and criminals
commit crimes on demand to get high view counts on entertainment feeds, Zoey
Ashe is forced by circumstance to flee her comfortable trailer park life. She
finds herself in the new city of Tabula Rasa, the ultimate corporate town,
totally free of government interference, where money rules the day and even
murder is a regular business transaction. Zoey discovers upon her arrival that
she is tied to the city much more closely than she could have expected and that
she has enemies quite eager to see her dead as soon as possible. With everyone
streaming her whole ordeal live Zoey can’t find a moment of peace or a place to
hide.How will she manage to keep her
potential killers off her back, even as the whole world watches nearly every
move she makes?

Futuristic Violence
and Fancy Suits is exactly what the title promises.You can expect fancy technology, weird
weapons, and fashionable hitmen.It’s far
from an intellectual piece, though it does work as a goof on modern internet
culture.After all, it’s an action
comedy with lots of crude humor and cultural references, a bit like a version
of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One that
doesn’t rely as much on nostalgia.Think
of it as a modern-day Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Galaxy as written by an American editor of Cracked.com, the
successor to the magazine that was the competitor of MAD magazine (because it
was: David Wong is that editor).